“Whether or not you buy into Mucha’s spiritual ambition, his illustrations are striking in their depth and detail, with a certain haunted, diaphanous quality that would be imitated throughout the twentieth century, right on up to those ponderous Led Zeppelin ‘Stairway to Heaven’ black-light posters that continue to grace all too many dorm rooms.”

In 1899, Alphonse Mucha, a progenitor of Art Nouveau, published Le Pater, an illustrated edition of the Lord’s Prayer embellished in his sinuous, faintly occult style. Mucha, who was born today in 1860, made only 510 copies of the book,...